Summer on the Cape (20 page)

For eight years, he had fought to lock the doors against those terrible memories. He made whatever life he could, here in this quiet place, and had used all his strength to keep himself from remembering. Now, if Allie was to hear about it from him, he would have to relive these events. How could he bear it?

Zach stood up and breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the familiar salty air, feeling the light wind from the north cooling his face. He knew that something powerful was happening to him. That locked door was opening and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If ever his courage had been tested, it had been nothing compared to what he was facing now.

He went from one boat to the next, making his routine check, putting each one to bed, as he did every night. He spent a couple of minutes on
Sea Smoke
, seeing to it that her hatches were closed for the night and that her lines were fast. Then he stood in the cockpit for a while, leaning back against the after cabin, looking at the moon’s reflection on the water.

What am I going to do?

He realized the confrontation with the past could no longer be avoided.

What am I going to do?

He looked again at the moonlight on the water, lifting his head to the light breeze that was blowing eight, maybe ten knots.

Tide’s come up.

He looked over at one of the little catboats tied up in the next slip, riding gently on the soft current. He needed to get out on the water and think for a while.

He left
Sea Smoke
and climbed into the catboat. In a moment, he’d hoisted the sail, silvery gray in the bright moonlight, billowing high above his head as it filled with the light wind, and he cast off from the dock and headed out into the harbor.

He held a southerly course, making an easy five or six knots, sitting back in the little boat, his hand light on the tiller. Above him, the moon was high, lighting up the shimmering water all around him.

Finally, the time had come. He couldn’t hold it away any longer. He knew he was going to have to remember it all. Now, out here on the water, in this lovely moon-filled night, while he was wide awake, he would have to let the whole nightmare replay itself, like a terrifying movie.

* * *

It always started the same way. The weather was good, with a nice, light breeze and gentle sea. No sign of any trouble. The new thirty-six-footer was making good time on her way to Newport for Block Island Race Week. She was a nice custom sloop, designed and built for him, and he was looking forward to trying her out in the race.

They’d planned to make it through the canal by late afternoon, lay over somewhere for the night, and get to Newport by the next evening. Liz had brought up some sandwiches from the galley and the kids were playing in the cockpit. Rob, the older boy, had learned to tie a bowline knot, and was teaching his little brother, Petey. It was early afternoon and they were right on schedule, just clearing the end of the shoals off Billingsgate, holding a course of three hundred degrees. They should reach the canal about an hour after the current changed direction.

The scene was burned with excruciating clarity into his memory. Somewhere in those last moments, his sun-filled, love-filled life had stopped. And it had been instantly replaced by a nightmare that never ended. The only signal he’d had was the sudden drop in the wind that made him look up from the chart he’d been studying. Maybe if he hadn’t been so busy with the chart, calculating his depth, maybe he’d have seen it sooner. Maybe with a little more time. Maybe ten minutes. Or even five.

What he saw was a thick, black wall of cloud to the northwest, lying low to the water and moving toward them fast. He knew what it meant, that front edge of solid black, billowing up into a mile-high cloud, deep gray above, carrying a churning, murderous wind. Could be as much as sixty, maybe even ninety miles an hour in the gusts, twisting in all directions and pushing a steep wall of water.

He didn’t want to scare the kids. “Liz!” He kept his voice low but sharp. “Hand me a vest and get yours on right away!”

“What’s the matter, Zach?” she said.

“Take a look!” He motioned to the northwest. Liz was an experienced sailor and she understood the danger as soon as she saw that black cloud. She yanked open the hatch where the life vests were stowed and handed one to Zach. The boys were wearing theirs, and she checked their straps and got her own on, real fast.

“You take the helm,” Zach said. “Hold her at two eighty-five as close as you can.”

He went forward, his mind racing.
Get those sails shortened, fast! Have to try to outrun it. Where’s that damn cloud tracking anyway? No use going to the engine. This racing sloop’s underpowered, only a two-blade folding prop. If the seas get bad, that engine isn’t going to push.

He reefed the sails down fast and got back into the cockpit. The solid black edge of cloud was much closer, coming at them fast, traveling more easterly than he’d expected.

“Liz! I’m going to have to tack! Get the harnesses on the boys!”

He shifted his course.

Got to get more southerly! I might not outrun this!

Liz had got the harness on Petey, its line secured to the pedestal’s base, when the wall of water hit them.

Again, and again, that terrible moment replayed itself, a moment frozen in constant, dreadful slow motion. Zach was helpless to stop it, and helpless to forget it.

The great mass of water filled the sky above them, crashing down, turning the boat into a toy, lifting it up and rolling it onto its side. And as the boat rolled, the thundering waves swept across Liz and cast Rob overboard.

Liz was flung hard against the boat’s coaming. She had seen Robby go over.

“Liz! No!”

Zach was fighting to hold the boat steady, but the winds came with the water, fierce, roaring, screaming winds churning the sea in all directions, forcing the boat down at a steep angle, whipping up sharp-faced waves that poured over the decks.

He saw Liz go over the side, clinging to the lifeline with one hand, trying to reach for Robby. But the line was under water, and the waves thundering around them were twelve feet high. Liz was swept away almost immediately.

All the rest was terrible confusion. Petey, clinging desperately to the pedestal, was crying to him in terror. Zach fought repeatedly to bring the boat around, back to where he’d last had a glimpse of the bright orange life vests. But the winds drove the boat back, back, relentlessly forcing her finally onto the shoals.

She was grounded, trapped, lying helplessly on her side as the violent winds slammed her down, and down, and down, repeatedly, her sails flapping, her decks standing up at a sharp angle, swept mercilessly by the great waves.

Zach grabbed for Petey’s harness line, giving the slack a quick turn around the pedestal guard to hold him fast. He reached into the cabin and pulled the radio mike from its holder and switched to the Coast Guard emergency channel.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is
Summer Wind
calling Canal Coast Guard! Urgent!” He could hear the chatter of other mayday calls on the radio.

“Come in,
Summer Wind
.”

“I’m aground on Billingsgate Shoal! Northeast of Bell One!”

“Are you wearing your flotation device,
Summer Wind
?”

Oh, God. “Yes! Yes! I lost my wife and son out there! To the northeast, about a mile and half, maybe two!”

“Okay,
Summer Wind
. We’re on it. We’ll get there as fast as we can.”

He dropped the mike back into the cabin, where tools and teakettle and books were being flung in all directions. He made his way forward, fighting to reach the mast, where he snapped his tether to the base. He grabbed a spare halyard and wound it around himself, lashing his body to the mast.

He never saw the boom, finally whipped loose from the mast, or its gooseneck joint flying at his head.

He was not conscious when the Coast Guard found them. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the deck of the rescue boat, and he saw them lifting Petey’s drowned body out of
Summer Wind
’s cockpit. Then he lost consciousness again.

Liz and Rob were never found, and it was presumed that their bodies had sunk to the bottom of the bay.

* * *

It was past twelve-thirty when Zach brought the catboat back into its slip. His clothes were drenched with sweat and his eyes were red from weeping. He tied the little boat up for the night, and dropped her sail and furled it on the boom. Then, exhausted, he sat on the empty dock for a long time, watching the moon’s reflection on the quiet surface of the water.

At last, he stood up, went to his truck, and drove back to his house on the hill. There, he went through the dark rooms, directly to the bedroom upstairs. He peeled off all his clothes and dropped them on the floor. The moonlight was flooding the room, and he went to the window and stood there naked, bathed in the cool light, with his hands braced up high on the window’s frame. His body felt as though it had been violently beaten. And yet, strangely, for the first time in eight years, he felt ready—no, eager—for the coming day. How long had it been since he had known such a whole, healthy sense of well-being?

When he’d first lost Liz and the boys, he’d thought his heart would never heal. After the funerals, he had closed down the offices in Boston and New York and retreated to the house on the Cape, living quietly with his pain and his guilt and his broken heart. Some days had been worse than others, and the nights were always bad, but slowly, slowly, he’d been able to live a fairly normal life, as long as he kept it simple. For eight years, in some unconscious place in his soul, he had held Liz and the boys tight against him, as though, if only his grip could be strong enough, they would not really be swept away from him. For eight years, nothing had loosened his grasp. Occasionally, after the first years, there had been women, briefly, in his life. That had helped him keep his sanity, but he was never able to be seriously interested in any of them. For eight years, he had locked his torment away in his heart, and for eight years, nothing had come into his life to comfort him.

And then Allie Randall stepped off a plane, and the sunlight shone around her and she lifted her hand against the breeze, and his life was changed forever.

Zach grinned into the moonlight. Until tonight, he’d been acting like an idiot toward her. No, he’d been acting like a lovesick kid. He laughed aloud. Maybe they were the same thing. It had sure been good for him. He laughed again, there in the dark, as he gazed across the lawn behind his house, into the trees where he’d caught a glimpse of her that morning, tiptoeing around in the trees.

What the hell had she been up to that morning? Zach stopped laughing. This matter of the Mayflower project was going to have to be cleared up between them. There was no way he would ever let that scheme become a reality, with their fool “rides” and tourist attractions out in the bay. Liz and Rob were still lying somewhere at the bottom of those waters, and Petey had died there, and Zach Eliot would see to it that their souls were allowed to sleep in peace.

It would mean that Allie would lose her big opportunity, but that couldn’t be helped. No one’s career moves straight forward, and she’d just have to withstand this loss. And if he couldn’t figure out a way to make it up to her, he wasn’t the man he thought he was. He’d seen her work and he knew she was damned good. He should be able to come up with something. But in any case, he was going to kill that project.

He went over to the bed and sat down on its edge, resting his arms on his knees, his head bent in concentrated thought. Finally, he’d made some decisions. He lay back, his head on his pillow, and closed his eyes, grinning happily again.

He was up before sunrise and made a pot of coffee. He found he was ravenous, and he fried a couple of eggs and sausages and had some toast and jam and butter. Then he showered and shaved. By six-thirty, he was on the first plane out of Provincetown, headed for his meeting with the chairman of Matsuhara’s board.

Chapter Fourteen

“I
t sure don’t look the same, does it, ma’am?” The cab driver looked up at the Tillman Building rising high above Madison Avenue, its upper stories catching the first light of the sun rising over the East River. He shook his head sorrowfully.

Allie counted out a handful of bills and handed them to the driver, pausing to look up through the cab’s window before she opened the door. “I see what you mean,” she said. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

The famous brass plaque, with the fine old art deco figures that had long been a New York landmark, had been replaced. Across the polished black granite façade that now covered the first three floors of the building had been etched the words “Matsuhara Worldwide” along with the company’s logo, a globe resting in cupped hands.

Allie paused for a moment on the sidewalk bracing herself for the important meeting ahead of her, glad that Adam would be there to help steer her through this unfamiliar and frightening maze of corporate negotiations.

The cab driver, before he pulled away from the curb, gave her an appreciative, quick, up-and-down glance, noting with approval the pale pink linen suit, the sleek legs and the cream-colored pumps, the honey-gold hair worn loose.
Very feminine
, he thought,
for such an obviously no-nonsense woman. And the big black leather portfolio is a nice touch. An artist, apparently. Maybe in advertising.
He decided she was a real knockout, definitely an A-plus. Looked like she was on her way to a big meeting. He could always tell when they had that intense, keyed-up look this early in the morning.

He tipped his hand to her in a kind of salute and smiled up at her through the window. “Have a good day,” he said as he put the car in gear. “And don’t take any prisoners!” He slid out into the Madison Avenue traffic and was gone.

Allie laughed nervously. “I needed that,” she assured herself, glad to have the cabbie’s little pep cheer. She pushed on through the revolving doors and headed for the farthest bank of elevators, express to the eighty-third floor, distracted somewhat by the unfamiliar clicking of her high heels on the lobby’s marble floor.